Oren kept going, because Mal always said that and he didn’t know why. “—I just can’t take from it what I want. People get mad when I raise taxes so that I can make my mansion lovelier. But I can’t get more things if I don’t have more slips of gold or silver, and I have to take those from the people. So when I took that silk cloak last week, I didn’t give any slips of gold because I didn’t have any, and I didn’t want to take any. Instead of taking gold that’s mine but being held by the people, I just took the cloak!” He smiled proudly. It had taken him all night to work that out, but finally he got it. And without any of his advisors’ help.
He never followed what they said anyway.
Mal closed his eyes. “High General, do we really have to continue this? He’s a waste of my breath—”
“Nicko, tell the man. This will be put on the message boards, remember?” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “Laws to follow? You know full well that how history is recorded is how it’s understood. The world needs to understand this in the right way.”
Oren heard his low muttering, but just didn’t worry about it. Life was so much easier when you stop worrying about the bits that make no sense.
The High General glanced over at the nervous scribe in the corner who was trying to read his lips. The man immediately hunched back over the stack of parchment on his small desk and returned to his scrawling.
Mal grudgingly opened his eyes. “Your theft in the market place caused a riot,” he resumed his explanation to Oren. “Remember us telling you about that?”
Oren nodded slowly. It seemed to be a rather good party.
“And that riot spread to nearly each of the seventeen villages surrounding Idumea. We’ve been hearing reports of deaths and chaos, and the army has been dispatched to quell the riots in villages where we didn’t even need forts before. The world has been devastated by your ineptitude!”
Oren silently mouthed in-ep-ti-tude. Mal liked big words. Oren didn’t.
The scribe hurriedly dipped his quill in the ink and scribbled on the parchment.
Mal cleared his throat and resumed his speech. “Since your ancestor Querul the First took control of our world in 190, he didn’t stop the chaos, but added to it. Starting in 195 we suffered from the Great War for five long years. Two hundred thousand were dead at the end of it.”
Oh, another lecture, thought Oren glumly. How many lectures had he sat through, bored to squirming because Mal said he needed an education? He’d done school. Lots of it. It was all the same. Words, writing, reading, staring out the window and waiting for something interesting to happen. As a boy he’d look at his piece of chalk and wish it could turn into a . . . into a stick, or something.
Maybe that wasn’t too interesting. But maybe two sticks—
“Oren?”
The king blinked and sat up straighter to face the snarling voice that said his name.
Mal had his arms folded, his hair so jittery that Oren knew the explosion of temper was coming at any moment. He gritted his teeth and braced himself. “Yes?”
“Where are you?!”
The king blinked twice at that. He looked around and considered that maybe Mal had been wrong to yell at him for years about being stupid. Clearly Mal was the one struggling right now. “We’re in the throne room,” Oren said kindly. Mal was an old man, after all.
“Oren!”
“Yes?” Oren was beginning to grow impatient. He wanted to go look for his cat.
“Pay attention!” Mal bellowed.
Oren jumped in his throne and nodded. That was the only way to calm Mal—silent obedience.
Professor Mal cleared his throat, shot a furious look at the High General who ignored him, and continued on the same, dull lecture.
“The violent faction who prolonged the war—the Guarders—were carelessly allowed by Querul the First to escape their punishments by fleeing to the dangerous forests beyond our borders. We weren’t saved from them. They still attack us and steal our goods!”
Oren knew better than sigh loudly. His grandmother’s slap always reminded him that she never approved of that, and neither did Mal. Sighs always made the old professor shake more, and right now he was quivering as if he stood on his own land tremor. All Oren could do was count the medals on the High General’s uniform, and wonder what they’d look like hanging in the windows where they could catch the sun’s light.
Maybe his cat would come back if he saw them shining . . .
“Querul didn’t bring peace,” Mal droned on. “Neither did his son Querul the Second, a brutal and paranoid king who employed twenty percent of the population to spy on each other looking for evidence of Guarder collaboration and bringing the need for execution squads. Under his rule another twelve thousand perished, according to our best guesses. Many of them simply vanished.”